Biomedical informatics spans a research space essential in a number of areas of life sciences and healthcare. The demand for well-trained research scientists in this area is exploding, although there is real need for independent research and informatics tool development, there is also an increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary research, where biomedical informaticians play a central role. We propose a combined pre- doctoral (6 positions) and post-doctoral (6 positions) research training program that prepares research fellows to become leaders in the academic and research biomedical informatics community and valuable contributors to interdisciplinary biomedical research problems. The goal of the biomedical informatics research training (BIRT) program at the University of Missouri- Columbia (MU) is to provide strong foundational training in informatics theory and methodology, build upon the fundamentals of biological and computational sciences, and prepare research fellows to assume leadership roles working on important problems in life scienes, healthcare, bioinformatics, and computational biology. MU has a strong history of biomedical informatics research training, but with implementaion of a recent planned expansion of informatics resources, our campus research community is now better positioned than ever before to be leaders in biomedical informatics research training and further strengthen life sciences and healthcare research. The creation of the MU Informatics Institute (MUM) brings together biomedical : informatics researchersfrom the campus, fully integrates faculty resources of 2 strong departments, Computer Science and Health Management and Informatics, and provides a structure for leveraging outstanding resources. The MUII will manage the PhD in Informatics program, as well as multidiscipliriary informatics research faculty and research trainees.